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“SOCIAL ECONOMICS: A BRANCH OR NEW ROOTS?”

Brian Showler (Lecturer in Social Economics and the Employment Services, University of Hull)

International Journal of Social Economics

ISSN: 0306-8293

Article publication date: 1 January 1974

495

Abstract

The term or title ‘social economics’ is by no means a new one, the American J. M. Clark, for example, used it as the title of a book published in 1936, and indeed there has been Hagenbuch's Cambridge Economics Handbook of that title first published in 1958. There does, however, appear to be an increasing recognition of the need for the development of a new approach to economic and social policy and problems that could, for the want of a better expression be termed socioeconomic in character. The evidence for this suggestion can be gathered from the very rapid growth of economic literature in the last few years dedicated to methodological problems and doubts about the wisdom of current trends, developments and values in the main discipline of economics. This increase of “anti‐economics” literature, of course provides only a negative rationale, but it can be seen to be in itself broadly reflective of certain fundamental changes in the nature of the social and economic parameters in contemporary advanced industrial society. Changes, it will be argued, that require a different and more integrated kind of social science approach to problems and policies than has hitherto been developed.

Citation

Showler, B. (1974), "“SOCIAL ECONOMICS: A BRANCH OR NEW ROOTS?”", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 4-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb013755

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1974, MCB UP Limited

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